Twelve
FANG
“Cut the shit, Fang,” Reno growls. “I need you to come get your daughter if you’re so fucking insistent that’s what you want.”
Jenna’s gaze tracks me from the room, disapproval clear in the apathetic glare.
“She has a name,” I snap, weaving past where Hustle leans against the doorframe.
“I’ve got a flight at two-thirty. You need to be here by one.”
“I thought you only needed her watched during school break. Why the change of heart?” I throw her words right back at her. “Where the fuck do you need to be today that’s more important than staying home to care for your kid?”
“She has a name, Fang,” the bitch parrots.
My mind immediately flicks back to Jenna saying the same thing last night. “Answer the question.” I stop walking when I find Jinx and Marty mid-conversation on the porch and redirect to the back of the house.
“I told you yesterday,” Reno says. “I’ve got work. For the weekend. Do you not listen to a fucking thing I say?”
“You said you need to work, not that you have work.” She never said anything about flying out to do it, either. “What work needs you to travel, Reno?” I say each word slowly and carefully while I step onto the back landing.
“Paid work,” she over-enunciates, delivering all the sass I’m used to.
“Where?”
“In a building.”
Fuck me. “For who?”
“A person who’ll pay me.”
“Reno,” I growl between gritted teeth.
“Fang,” she sing-songs.
Heel of my hand to my forehead, I draw a deep breath and then set my gaze on the horizon. “Who gave you the job?”
“You don’t need to worry about that.” I catch the clatter of something in the background as she swears under her breath. “I’m trying to pack. Can you be here or not?”
“I’m not ready for Molly yet.”
“Then keep her across the road with Chaos’s woman until you are. Give her to that goody-two-shoes bitch Jinx is dating. I don’t care how you do it, Fang. I just need you to.”
“What happened to Rhonda?”
“She’s doing a double-shift. Something about someone needing medical leave or the like.”
A trio of swallows darts and dives across the field. “Is this job going to become a regular thing?”
She exhales, pausing before saying softly. “I don’t know.”
“Tell me what you’re doing for the weekend, Reno. And no lies or bullshit. If you want my help today, I need your honesty.”
She pauses again, and I picture her teasing the corner of her mouth with the tip of her tongue like she does when deciding what to say. I used to think it was cute. Now I know better. “Escorting.”
Explains why she has to fly out of state to do it, then. “It can’t be any more than a one-off,” I warn. “That shit becomes regular, and you’ll be in and out all the goddamn time. Molly doesn’t need that.”
“Need what, Fang? And be real careful with what you say here.”
So I am. “Molly doesn’t need to wonder why her momma leaves her every weekend to go sell her body to strange men.”
She draws a deep breath. “Like she’d understand what I’m doing.”
“She already asks which one of the brothers here is your boyfriend, Reno. Even asked me if the goddamn doctor was one of your ‘special friends’ because you saw him so damn much last year.”
“Because she kept getting bronchitis,” she retorts. “Not for anything else.”
“Not the point of the conversation, Reno.”
The line falls quiet for a while. “Are you coming to get her or what?”
I run a hand through my hair and glance up to the sky. Am I? There’s a lot of shit going down at the moment. A lot of shit I don’t want messing up Molly’s head. But, for once, maybe Reno was right. Maybe Vanessa or Kyra would agree to look after her.
For a while. Just until I can get things better sorted for her.
“On one condition.”
“Here we go,” she says with a sigh. “What?”
“We talk boundaries when you get back.” It’s a conversation we’ve avoided long enough.
If Molly’s to have the best chance in her future, her parents need to be on the same page.
“We need to set down some rules around what she’s exposed to, create comfortable routines for her. She needs stability, Reno.”
“What goddamn parenting column have you been reading?” Her throaty laugh peppers the line. “You think you can give her that?”
“Better than a mom who constantly offloads her to a stranger’s house so she can go out drinking for the night.”
“I’m allowed a life, Fang. My needs don’t change just because I’ve got a goddamn kid running around the house.”
“They should.”
She scoffs “Like yours did?”
I grimace when her words hit the intended mark. “You knew what my life entailed when you got yourself knocked up.”
“And you knew what I was like when you stuck your dick in there to do it.”
Yeah, I did. But I never fucked Reno for the express purpose of creating a Band-Aid baby. That’s where we differ. “You know,” I say with a mock laugh. “I can never really figure it out. Why the fuck would you want a kid to lock me down if family life is so fucking against everything you are?”
“Because I thought it would change me,” she growls. “Change us.”
“And yet all it did was highlight how different we are. Ain’t fuck all changed about either of us, baby.”
“So you think,” she snips.
“So I know,” I grit back. “Don’t bullshit me and say you don’t wish you’d done things different. That you’d return to a life without her in a heartbeat.”
The line goes quiet. I watch a swallow dart back across the field, separating itself from the others.
“It’s not permanent,” Reno says quietly. “I just need to make enough to cover rent for a few months while I take a course the MPS offers. That’s all. I want things to be different, Fang. I really do.”
Wanting things to be different and having the discipline to go through the discomfort while you get there are two different things, though.
If anyone knows about choosing comfort over pain, it’s me.
“Just this once,” I say. “And we talk about boundaries.” I don’t trust she has it in her to turn things around. For all I know, the course is complete bullshit.
Most of what she said to me was.
“Be here before twelve, Fang.”
“I’ll be there when the club’s done with me.”
She barks a high-pitched laugh. “For real? And what? I just leave Molly on the doorstep when I lock up?”
“You’ll fucking wait until I can get there, is what you’ll do.”
“I have a flight to catch!”
“And I have church.”
She finally quiets down, on the same page with me about the importance of some things. “When?”
“I dunno. Soon. I’ll do my best to be there on time. Gotta make sure the truck’s available.”
“She’s old enough to hold herself on the back of your bike, Fang.”
“She’s not old enough to survive a fall,” I snap. “I’ll bring the truck.”
“Whatever.” Reno disconnects, leaving me in the stark silence of the property. If I focus hard enough, I can make out the murmur of conversations happening indoors, but the overall ambiance is wind in the tall trees and the birds still darting across the barren fields.
It might not be perfect, but it’s still more than I had growing up.
She’ll have the woods to explore. I had garages with oil-stained floors.
She’s got the run of the farmhouse. I had a two-bedroom home with inadequate insulation.
A fully stocked kitchen compared to the barren cupboards I made do with.
But most importantly, she’ll have one thing in common with my childhood.
Family. A big one. Not created by blood but forged in fire. She’ll have a dozen people watching out for her at every turn.
And maybe that’s what she needed all along.
Maybe I was the one who was wrong.